indeed steve, hardest luck story was from the first photo. The guy who lived there lost his first house in the "white flat" fire 2 years ago. his son built the house for him so he had somewhere to live, and he's copped it again. He said to one of the guys i was working with "they sell houseboats on the murray yeah? might be time for me to buy one of them!"
thats a "rural padmount" ground level transformer. only uses one phase from the 11kv system (the one cable coming into the "elbow" on the left). Produces 2 phases of 240v for consumer supply. This one WAS feeding 4 houses, but only 2 were left that could be safely re-energised by generators. Note, that was closed during the fire and normal operation, so shows how much heat there would have been